Tamia Dakinah is Miss Liberia Minnesota. | Photo: Facebook, Miss Liberia MN Beauty Pageant

To make other cultures real through vivid first-hand stories and to explain the connections between “us” and “them” – that’s our goal here at Round Earth Media, and Linda Sjostrom, our web editor, understands it well. Linda has spent time reporting and editing for print and radio both in the United States and abroad. Here, a recent event prompts her to not only reflect on a story she covered in the past, but to also consider identity.

Just last month, a crowd gathered at the Miracle Empowerment Center to witness the crowning of Tamia Dakinah as Miss Liberia Minnesota 2010. In the same way, others across the country have or will name someone the Miss Liberia of their own state this year.

The title is, to me, an interesting one. Many of us are familiar with pageants like ‘Miss Minnesota’ and ‘Miss USA’ – roles that dub their bearers as representatives of one singular place. The title I’m thinking about now seems to hold quite a different meaning. Miss Liberia Minnesota. A representative – a part – of not one area, but two.

As I think this over, I think of the tens of thousands of people who are Liberian in my own state. What does it mean to identify as Liberian? What does it mean to identify as Minnesotan? And how do those dual roles play into each other, and into all of the other roles that encompass daily life?

I’m reminded of conversations I had in 2009 while writing an article about Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). Then – and now – thousands of Liberian refugees living in the United States are on DED status. Originally granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 1991 for affected residents during a bloody civil war in Liberia, the United States government has for years extended their allotted here in light of ongoing hardships in Liberia. While their status has changed from TPS to DED, the pattern seems to be the same: Liberians who came to the United States as victims of war are told they must leave by a certain time, and then shortly before that date arrives their DED is extended for 12 or 18 months at a time.

While the war in Liberia is officially over, deep economic struggles still face those living there, along with bouts of violence. Unemployment alone sits around 85 percent, according to the last estimate of the CIA World Fact Book. At this point in time, many say Liberia would struggle if made to reintegrate so many people back into its workforce at once. The United States would lose thousands from its own workforce, a large proportion of which work in the healthcare sector. A bill is currently going through the legislative process to grant Liberian refugees permanent residency, but it is a bill that was first seen in 1998. Again a pattern exists: eight times a variation of this bill has been introduced, and eight times it has died upon reaching committee.

I can’t help but think about how much a year means in my own life. Each year I, just like all people, accomplish some things and fail to accomplish others. Things change for me each year, but never yet to a point where I’ve ever had to leave the country without actively choosing to do so. It’s strange to think that my year can be so different from the year of someone standing near me – that something which affects so many people in the area I call home is something I haven’t personally experienced. My experiences and identity as a Minnesotan or a North American or a woman may not be the same identity others have formed around those very things.

Perhaps finding the connections between our different identities is part of what Round Earth seeks to accomplish.

While the Miss Liberia Minnesota Scholarship Pageant may very pointedly demonstrate the way several different countries and cultures often help shape the way we identify ourselves, reminders of this can be found in so many ways each day. It can be found every time someone hangs a flag or learns a second language. It can be found whenever someone serves dishes from outside the country they reside in, or teaches the next generation of young people how to craft the artwork that traditionally has told the story of their ancestor’s native country.

And it can be found, also, in those who may experience it in a more urgent way – those who have one foot in Liberia and another in the United States, in an annual limbo between the two.